We musicians need to get paid! We can’t play for free any more, right?

MFM believes and advocates that making music is a profession. We also believe that when musicians function as workers, they should be compensated as such.

The only way to be accepted as a group of professionals or as a business league, MFM and her members need to legalize their profession in DC.
So let’s organize first, professional musicians…creative workers! Only numbers speak!

We invite you to be an active part of a new musicians’ movement. Come to our meeting tomorrow…and join MFM.

2. Tim Hagans & Joe Hertenstein: TheBadDuets

Tim Hagans (trumpet) & Joe Hertenstein (drums) commence a bi-weekly residency at Nublu on Ave C of their duo-project TheBadDuets inviting a different guest for every session. This week’s guest is the great pianist Vana Gierig!
Come and check out their adventurous music making at the fringes of modern Jazz. Listen to the recording of our concert at the 2015 Nublu JazzFestival feat. Ravi Coltrane and Jon Irabagon:https://soundcloud.com/onurgul/12132015-bad-duets-live-at-nublu-nyc

3. The Glenn Branca Ensemble

Date: Tuesday, February 23, 2016Time: 8pmVenue:The Kitchen (512 W 19th St, New York, New York 10011)Tickets: $15/$20Genre: modern music

The Kitchen welcomes back Glenn Branca to The Kitchen after more than twenty years for the premiere of The Third Ascension, a new work for guitar, bass, and drums conducted by Branca. This piece is the latest development of Branca’s influential 1981 work The Ascension, in which he experiments with resonances generated by alternate tunings for multiple electric guitars. Reworked from a recent iteration as part of the Bang on a Can marathon, this performance features Reg Bloor and Arad Evans on guitar and Owen Weaver on drums. These shows will be recorded live for a subsequent album release.

Visionary singer and composer Kavita Shah has been hailed as a “polyglot in more than language alone” (Boston Globe). The native New Yorker of Indian origin fluent in Spanish, French, and Portuguese incorporates elements of traditional music from the Global South into a modern jazz setting. Her debut album VISIONS, produced by Beninese guitarist Lionel Loueke, was dubbed “breathtakingly beautiful” (Downbeat), “daring and ambitious” (Jazzwise), “stunning” (Aquarian Weekly) and “one of the most unique and global inspired debut releases in some time” (Critical Jazz). A graduate of Harvard College and Manhattan School of Music, Shah has performed at such major venues as the Kennedy Center, Blue Note, Jazz Standard, Winter Jazz Festival, Rochester Jazz Festival, and Paris’ Duc des Lombards. She has collaborated with Loueke, Sheila Jordan, Greg Osby, Steve Wilson, Peter Eldridge, Yacouba Sissoko, and Samir Chatterjee.

5. Brooklyn Raga Massive George Harrison Birthday/ Beatles Tribute

Perhaps no one is more responsible for bringing awareness to the beauty of raga to Western music lovers then George Harrison and the Beatles. In an ambitious production worthy of the epic subject matter, the Brooklyn Raga Massive All-Stars return the love. The musician collective will re-interpret and re-contextualize the classic Indian inspired material by the world’s most beloved band.

7. Amir ElSaffar

Amir ElSaffar (trumpet) will play in a trio with Ole Mathisen (tenor saxophon) and TBD.
Amir ElSaffar has distinguished himself with a mastery of diverse musical traditions and a singular approach to combining Middle Eastern musical languages with jazz and other styles of contemporary music. A recipient of the 2013 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, ElSaffar has been described as “uniquely poised to reconcile jazz and Arabic music without doing either harm,” (the Wire) and “one of the most promising figures in jazz today” (Chicago Tribune).

8. WEIRD WEDNESDAYS: Episode 26 – Terry Dame

WEIRD WEDNESDAYS (on Thursdays). Episode 26 – Terry Dame presents an ongoing monthly music series dedicated to instrument inventors and players of found objects and other musical oddities. Dame is a composer, multi-instrumentalist and instrument builder and leader of the invented instrument ensemble Electric Junkyard Gamelan. Terry Dame’s WeirdWednesdays did start on a Wednesday, but to make it weirder, it will be now happen every last Thursday of the month…because Thursday is the weirdest Wednesday of all.

This month Dame will have performances by the Weird Wednesday All-Stars…that’s Ken Butler, Ed Potokar and yours truly. Also, another WW regular, Ranjit Bhatnagar, will present some of the creations from his annual February – Instrument a Day tradition and perhaps a bit of live video mash up magic. And finally, WW virgin Paul Rubenstein will perform on the his string creation, the Ubertar.

Myk Freedmam and the Myk Freedmans – 9pm
“Lap-steel whiz Myk Freedman excels at intensely evocative instrumentals that draw on Dixieland, klezmer and avant-garde jazz. His aesthetic is wistful yet subtly surreal.” -Time Out New York. His ensemble consists of New York’s top players from the next generation of the Downtown scene. Each Myk Freedman bringing their own expertise be it from the Balkans, backing the Dirty Projectors, trad jazz and the world of tiny improv. Their shows are a genre bending exploration of spontaneous arrangements of Freedman’s melodic and mysteriously sentimental tunes.
Myk Freedman-lap steel, Kenny Warren-trumpet, Patrick Breiner-reeds, Jason Vance-banjo, Michael Bates-bass, Carlo Costa-drums.

This event is part of the Great Performers Complimentary Classical series, a special set of free concerts that spotlight some of the brightest rising string quartets. Seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis.

11. AUDREY CHEN and FLANDREW FLEISENBERG

AUDREY CHEN uses the voice, cello and occasional analog electronics, Chen’s work delves deeply into her own version of narrative and non-linear storytelling. A large component of her music is improvised and her approach to this is extremely personal and visceral. Her playing explores the combination and layering of the homemade analog synthesizer, preparations and traditional and extended techniques in both the voice and cello. She works to join these elements into a singular ecstatic personal language.

Fleisenberg is a player of objects. Drums only fall peripherally into his spectrum, while he is mostly fascinated in coaxing out the inherent material characters of “mundane things”. These wide manipulations of external implements draw an aural architecture around Chen’s internally driven sonic language. Her own deeply personal yet unconventional uses of the voice and cello, in combination with Fleisenberg’s material conjuring, creates a wordless discourse inside of a constantly breathing tactile space.

12. The Flux Machine

“The Flux Machine are ready to grab you with their infectious punk infused alternative rock and take you for a wild ride!” (Music Junkie Press).

Already featured on AudioFuzz, Music Junkie Press and New Noise Magazine, among others, The Flux Machine are “LOUD LOUD LOUD” (AudioFuzz). Louder! was mastered by DC-based producer,

Taylor Larson, who has produced and mastered records from heavy rock acts such as From First to Last, Periphery and Veil of Maya. The Flux Machine have logged performances across some of New York’s well-known rock stages, including Pine Box Rock Shop.

13. KANE MATHIS

KANE MATHIS performing on the 21-string Mandinka Harp and the Turkish Oud, Kane Mathis renders compelling interpretations of these traditional musics.
Kane began making trips to The Gambia, Africa in 1996 to live with a family of hereditary musicians studying primarily with Malamini Jobarteh. In 2011 Kane became the first non-African to be endorsed by the Gambian National Center For Arts and Culture. Kane has also studied at Istanbul’s I.T.U. conservatory before a 5 year apprenticeship with Oud virtuoso Münir Beken. Kane is a 2010 Earshot Jazz album of the year winner and a recipient of the 2012 Chamber Music America grant.

14. BRASS TACKS: Underground Horns

UNDERGROUND HORNS is a Brooklyn based brass band playing Afro Funk Bhangra New Orleans grooves and beyond. All About Jazz called their 2009 debut record FUNK MONK “kick-ass dance music that brushes up against psychedelia with shots of funky brass juice.”